Labour Opens Door to ‘Stalinist’ 15-Minute Cities Across Britain
Labour has approved a rollout of “Stalinist” 15-minute cities across the UK. Camilla Turner in the Telegraph has more.
Ministers have said that they will allow councils to use driver licence databases to impose fines on drivers who fall foul of “traffic filters”, which restrict driving in certain areas.
The controls on motorists, which are to be implemented for the first time in Oxford city centre later this year, have been described as “perverse” by motor groups.
The 15-minute city is based on the idea that a person can access amenities within a quarter of an hour by walking or cycling. In some cases, this could result in traffic restrictions being brought in for drivers.
The most high-profile example of such a plan is in Oxford, where the council put forward proposals to divide the city into six “15-minute neighbourhoods”.
Under the scheme, drivers would need a residents’ permit that allows 100 days of free travel per year through six traffic filters during operating hours.
Meanwhile, a separate permit allows 25 days of free travel per year through six congestion charge locations during charging hours, and after this, drivers face fines if they travel without the relevant permission.
Greg Smith, Shadow Transport Minister, said: “This is the blueprint for a national rollout. Labour has given the green light for draconian councils like Oxfordshire to police how people live, move and drive, using cameras and fines backed by DVLA data.
“Oxford is the test case, but this is Labour’s blueprint for the country.”
Duncan White, Director, of the Alliance of British Drivers said 15-minute cities were an “abomination”.
He said it was a “perverse” and “Stalinist” approach to social control, adding: “It is an encroachment on civil liberties, and it is a page out of the East Germany playbook.
“With the 15-minute city, you will have to, in effect, apply for an internal passport to go and visit your granny. From a civil liberties perspective, it is nonsensical. From an operational point of view, it is bizarre.”
Jack Cousens, head of roads policy at the AA, said: “What local authorities sometimes struggle to remember is that the car remains and continues to remain the main method which people use to travel around our country.
“Cars coming into the town centres generate a huge amount of parking revenue for local authorities, and the local high street is dependent on strong, consistent footfall, and cars are probably the easiest way for people to get in and out of town centres.
“We don’t want barriers that harm the national economy and the local economy.”
Worth reading in full.
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We need the permission of civil servants to travel? When was that human right removed from us?
civil servants dont have cars, the only ones they use are the chauffeured ones paid for by us
I am sure the right to travel will have an additional charge.
Never, our Constitutional Bill of Rights gives us freedom of speech and movement. No one has the right to remove our ability to travel where and when we want in our own country. Anyone trying to impose restrictions on our freedom needs to be arrested and prosecuted and jailed.
Jaw-dropping stupidity. The mind just boggles. How is this happening?
because we let it
The people of Oxford voted in the morons behind this so I look forward to them suffering. The downside is that when the businesses go bankrupt and unemployment rises, we normal people will be expected to fund their benefits.
Oxford has lots of radicalised students who dont drive dont contribute to the economy, but who do have a vote along with their moronic lecturers
It is not stupid. It is their political ambition.
if we all ignore their dumb controls and refuse to pay they will have to climb down.
Undoubtedly this explains why the roads in Oxfordshire now are so filled with pot holes they are dangerous. Hopefully Oxford will wither as a place to work, visit, shop, etc. Let them have their tidy graveyard, and hopefully the council will find their pensions can no longer be afforded.
If there was mass non-compliance then the system would be overwhelmed. But that is unlikely as people will move away. Businesses will close as this adds another layer of problems to those that the moron Reeves has heaped on businesses already. It will be fun to watch it go downhill.
Correct. People and businesses are already moving away. Oxford CC is startlingly stupid and incompetent
Cambridge is also full of pot holes, so is EastWestRail simply connecting the pot holes??
Off-T
Breaking News
Burnham blocked.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/andy-burnham-keir-starmer-labour-latest-updates-b2907161.html
Yes – only the execrable Lucy Powell voted for him.
Was that a dog whistle I heard or a little trumpet?
True colours on display there, of course she has no reason to care about Starmer as she is protected by the Liebour faithful party membership and cannot be dislodged.
Oh look…
The British government has said that it will unveil plans this week to create a new national police force, dubbed the “British FBI,” to take charge on complex investigations such as counterterrorism, fraud, online child abuse and criminal gangs.
In other words, a fully politicised far-Left Gestapo to clamp down on free speech, as not all local constabularies are as zealous as the tyrants want.
Basically, the Stasi.
Who does this remind you of?
Apparently Labour hasn’t the funds to mount a mayoral bye-election in Manchester. Even with all the money they’ve saved by cancelling council elections this year?
Sir Scared Starmer.
Easily sorted. Abolish the mayor. Not needed, not wanted.
Some mistake, shurely?
I thought this was all just a crazy conspiracy theory from the far right!
Its like this…
Before I retired, I benefitted from a company car, as I worked from home and travelled a few hundred miles a week on business. The car was registered to an office in Birmingham, along with hundreds of others in the fleet, so how will they get around that. Those who did fewer miles qualified for a regular rental car from a national car hire company, how will they regulate people who one day use their own car and another a rental car.
Local government will probably have to employ more people in order to work that one out
Or two people sharing a car: surely, a very environmentally friendly option.
All of which exposes the truth that despite this year’s speeches, the Davos imperative is being loyally implemented, transmitted through empty heads to the useful idiots that administer these councils. Oh, how they hate us!
More support for Reform UK.
I have no doubt members of Uniparty would be exempt along with all Peers, MPs, Quango executives and so on.
No question.
Oxford to become the first English city to be inhabited by digital slaves who may not travel without let or hindrance and more fool them.
It takes academic excellence to be oblivious to common sense.
Intelligent but clueless??
It’s incredible that this is actually happening, when you remember how citizens of Russia and China were forbidden to travel within their own countries without official government permission, just as in Mediaeval Europe under the Feudal System, where serfs were tied to the land, and could not travel anywhere without permission from the land “Lord”.
These 15-Minute Cities are an attempt to re-impose actual Feudalism, part of the Globalist New Feudal World Order.
I guess they reckon they still haven’t fallen far enough in the polls…..
This isn’t just anti-car, it’s anti-human.
Remember this Government is going to interfere less with people’s lives.
It seems every day another ban, fine, restriction, insane diktat is announced interfering with every Fxxxxx aspect of our lives.
Who voted for these evil retxxxs?
I’m surprised the new M25/M3 junction was built, as it significantly improves traffic flow. Good job OCC weren’t the decision body for it. They’d have wanted planters in the middle lanes!!
Yet break into our country on a motorised rubber inflatable and you are put up in a hotel then possibly given a house and generally feted by these communists. I don’t understand why no case has yet been brought under human rights, or does that only protect les autres.
The argument should not be an economic one (loss of revenue for shops and councils) but an argument about the fundamental freedom of movement.
When I told my “friends “ about this happening years ago I was told that I was a “conspiracy theorist”. Who’s wearing the tinfoil hat now?!
Has there ever been a time when government in this country was at war with its own citizens like this government is? We have locked up thousands more than every other country including Russia and China because we don’t like what they said. We attack our people with taxes the mafia would blush at, We destroy National Identity and Culture with hundreds of thousands of migrants every year. We try and force us to accept men in our daughters toilet, we allow gang rapists to get off with it so as not to disrupt “social cohesion”——The political class have destroyed the very fabric of our Nation and are turning us into a free for all for people from every corner of the globe. The 1950’s was the last decade of Britain as it formerly was.
Dear Oxford City Council, you SERVE us, you don’t RULE us! Please remember that, and get back into your box. Oh, and when govt took the money from us to pay for the roads being built, there were NO contractual preconditions for amount of use.
I have an 8 yard walk between my front door and the pavement. What can the government do to charge me for leaving my house and walking to the pavement?
I am in the USA reading this and have to admit it is a shocker to continuously read the bad news from the U.K. surely your crazy gov’t needs workers who pay taxes. Why would they do anything that prevents this?